In this Aug. 11, 2016 photo, Lovely Harasme 26, sits in front of her mother's house in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She says she was one of several women who worked as prostitutes for Sri Lankan peacekeepers with the U.N. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

This Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017 photo shows the remains of Habitation Leclerc in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In the ruins, a group of abandoned children found shelter but were barely surviving. Exploiting that desperation, U.N. peacekeepers lured them into a child sex ring. In August 2007, the U.N. received complaints of “suspicious interactions” between Sri Lankan soldiers and Haitian children, launching an investigation. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

FILE - This Monday, July 11, 2011 file photo shows silhouettes of U.N. peacekeepers from Brazil at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. According to an AP investigation, some 150 allegations of abuse and exploitation were reported in Haiti between 2004 and 2016. The allegations involved U.N. peacekeepers and other personnel. Alleged victimizers came from Bangladesh, Brazil, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Uruguay and Sri Lanka, according to U.N. data and interviews. More countries may have been involved, but the United Nations only started disclosing alleged perpetrators’ nationalities after 2015. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

In this Aug. 16, 2016 photo, a Brazilian U.N. peacekeeper opens a gate at the U.N. base in the Cite Soleil slum of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. According to an AP investigation, some 150 allegations of abuse and exploitation were reported in Haiti between 2004 and 2016. The allegations involved U.N. peacekeepers and other personnel. Alleged victimizers came from Bangladesh, Brazil, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Uruguay and Sri Lanka, according to U.N. data and interviews. More countries may have been involved, but the United Nations only started disclosing alleged perpetrators’ nationalities after 2015. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

In this Aug. 11, 2016 photo, Martine Gestime 32, wipes her tears during an interview in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Gestime said she was raped by a Brazilian peacekeeper in 2008 and became pregnant with her son, Ashford. Unable to afford school for him, she relies on him to beg for food. "He tells me all the time that he doesn’t have a father or mother who can look after him." (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

This Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017 photo shows the remains of Habitation Leclerc in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In the ruins, a group of abandoned children found shelter but were barely surviving. Exploiting that desperation, U.N. peacekeepers lured them into a child sex ring. In August 2007, the U.N. received complaints of “suspicious interactions” between Sri Lankan soldiers and Haitian children, launching an investigation. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

In this Aug. 15, 2016 photo, Janila Jean, 18, carries her daughter as she walks to her friend's house before an interview in Jacmel, Haiti. Jean said she was a 16-year-old virgin when a U.N. peacekeeper from Brazil lured her to the U.N. compound two years earlier with a smear of peanut butter on bread, then raped her at gunpoint and left her pregnant. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

In this Aug. 15, 2016 photo, Marlene Andre 38, background right, arranges clothes while her son, Johnsley, 5, stands in front of their tent in Jacmel, Haiti. Marlene was barely scraping by before a U.N. peacekeeper made her pregnant. The birth of her fourth child was the tipping point. She now can’t afford rent and lives in a threadbare tent. "In Haiti, we churn water to make butter. Life is hard." (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

In this Aug. 15, 2016 photo, Janila Jean, 18, sits in front of a friend's house as her daughter cries during an interview in Jacmel, Haiti. Jean said she was a 16-year-old virgin when a U.N. peacekeeper from Brazil raped her at gunpoint and left her pregnant. Jean says there are times when she thinks about killing her baby. “I just cry most days,” she said. “Some days, I imagine strangling my daughter to death. It’s hard to see her face as a reminder of what happened, but it’s also hard not knowing anything about who the father is.” (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

This image made from part of a U.N. internal investigation document dated Nov. 19, 2007 shows a hole in a perimeter wall of the U.N. base in Jacmel, Haiti. The report describes a statement by a teenage girl who said she and others crawled through this opening to enter the base where they was sexually abused by peacekeeper soldiers. (AP Photo)

In this Aug. 11, 2016 photo, Martine Gestime 32, holds up a picture of her son, Ashford, during an interview in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Gestime said she was raped by a Brazilian peacekeeper in 2008 and became pregnant with Ashford. They live in a cramped two-room dwelling she shares with six other people in a Port-au-Prince slum. Unable to afford school for him, she relies on him to beg for food. "He tells me all the time that he doesn’t have a father or mother who can look after him." (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

FILE - In this Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2008 file photo, Sri Lankan army soldiers trained as U.N. peacekeepers march during a ceremony in Panagoda Army camp, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Colombo, Sri Lanka. According to an AP investigation, some 150 allegations of abuse and exploitation were reported in Haiti between 2004 and 2016. The allegations involved U.N. peacekeepers and other personnel. Alleged victimizers came from Bangladesh, Brazil, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Uruguay and Sri Lanka, according to U.N. data and interviews. More countries may have been involved, but the United Nations only started disclosing alleged perpetrators’ nationalities after 2015. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

In this Aug. 17, 2016 photo, Marie-Ange Haitis, 40, stands with her daughter, Samantha, at their home in Leogane, Haiti. Haitis says she met a Sri Lankan commander in December 2006 and he soon began making nighttime visits to her house. “By January, we had had sex,” she said. “It wasn’t rape, but it wasn’t exactly consensual, either. I felt like I didn’t have a choice.” Haitis says Samantha has started asking more questions about her father. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

AP Investigation: UN troops lured kids into Haiti sex ring

By PAISLEY DODDS

Apr. 12, 2017

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The Haitian girl known Victim No. 1 was 12 when she first had sex with a Sri Lankan peacekeeper. She says she didn't even have breasts yet.

The boy, known as Victim No. 9, was 15 when his ordeal began. Over the course of three years, he said he had sex with more than 100 Sri Lankan peacekeepers, averaging about four a day.

From 2004 to 2007, nine Haitian children were exploited by a child sex ring involving at least 134 Sri Lankan peacekeepers, according to a U.N. report obtained by The Associated Press.

Often the children were given cookies or a few dollars in exchange for sex. Although 114 of the peacekeepers were sent home, none was ever jailed for the abuse.

Justice for victims is rare. An Associated Press investigation of U.N. missions during the past 12 years found an estimated 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and U.N. personnel around the world — signaling the crisis is much larger than previously known. More than 300 of the allegations involved children, the AP found, but only a fraction of the alleged perpetrators were jailed.

In March, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced new measures to tackle peacekeeper misconduct. But the proclamation had a depressingly familiar ring: More than a decade ago, the United Nations commissioned a report that promised to do much the same thing, yet most of the reforms never materialized.

For a full two years after those promises were made, the children in Haiti were passed around from soldier to soldier. And in the years since, peacekeepers have been accused of sexual abuse the world over.

In response to the AP's investigation, the head of the U.N. office that oversees the conduct of peacekeepers said Wednesday that progress was being made with member states to hold perpetrators accountable and to get victims help.

"Every single allegation of sexual exploitation and abuse by U.N. personnel, be it uniformed or civilian, is appalling," Under-Secretary-General for Field Support Atul Khare said. "Everyone, especially us, are aware of the shortcomings in the system. We believe we are advancing in the right direction, especially with the secretary-general's new approach.

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been calling for reforms in the United Nations for more than a year. He may well get them under President Donald Trump, whose administration has proposed a 31 percent reduction to the U.S. foreign aid and diplomacy budget.

"If I heard that a U.N. peacekeeping mission was coming near my home in Chattanooga," he told AP, "I'd be on the first plane out of here to go back and protect my family."

The Haitian children had made a home for themselves at Habitation Leclerc, a resort was once well-known throughout Port-au-Prince as a lush refuge amid the capital's grimy alleyways. During its heyday in the 1980s, celebrities like Mick Jagger and Jackie Onassis would perch by the pool or stroll past the property's Voodoo temple.

By 2004, the resort was a decrepit clutch of buildings and several children, either orphaned or abandoned by their parents, were living in its ruins.

It was there that the girl identified as Victim No. 1, or V01, met other children in the same straits: two young girls referred to in the U.N. report as "V02" and "V03," and a young boy, "V08." The boy initially supported them by occasionally bringing food from his aunt, but they were often hungry.

The peacekeepers had arrived that year as part of a new mission to help stabilize the country in the wake of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's ouster. Some of the peacekeepers in the Sri Lankan contingent were based nearby.

In August 2007, the U.N. received complaints of "suspicious interactions" between Sri Lankan soldiers and Haitian children.

V02, who was 16 when the U.N. team interviewed her, told them she had sex with a Sri Lankan commander at least three times, describing him as overweight with a moustache and a gold ring. She said he often showed her a picture of his wife.

V03 identified 11 Sri Lankan troops through photographs, one of whom she said was a corporal with a "distinctive" bullet scar between his armpit and waist. V04, who was 14, said she had sex with the soldiers every day in exchange for money, cookies or juice.

The boy, V08, said he had sex with more than 20 Sri Lankans. Most would remove their name tags before taking him to trucks, where he gave them oral sex or was sodomized by them.

Under Haitian law, having sex with someone under 18 is considered statutory rape. U.N. codes of conduct also prohibit exploitation.

"The sexual acts described by the nine victims are simply too many to be presented exhaustively in this report, especially since each claimed multiple sexual partners at various locations where the Sri Lankan contingents were deployed throughout Haiti over several years," the report said.

At the close of the UN investigation, 114 Sri Lankan peacekeepers were sent home.

Ten years later, U.N. officials said they were unable to find any members of the mission in Haiti who might have dealt with child victims in the sex ring case and did not know what happened to the children. An Italian non-governmental organization, AVSI, helped the children at the time but lost track of them after the country's devastating 2010 earthquake.

Some Haitians, including lawyer Mario Joseph, wonder whether the U.N. has done more harm than good in a country that has endured tragedy after tragedy since it became the first black republic in 1804.

"Imagine if the U.N. was going to the United States and raping children," Joseph said in Port-au-Prince. "Human rights aren't just for rich white people."

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Dodds reported from several locations in Haiti, London and Geneva. Katy Daigle reported from Colombo, Sri Lanka. Krista Larson reported from Dakar, Senegal.